DRAFT DAY DISCUSSION Official Patriots Draft Day 3 Thread - Rounds 4-7

[Jim Beankie]

I need to get all of the vaginal references out of my system now. I was counting on having this guy all season for such immaturity.

It's clear that your work here is a Labiar of Love. That being said, my wife is sooo glad the draft is over. I can stop thinking about this stuff until Aug.

 

[Sciz]

We knew this tackle class was rough, but it somehow manages to get even worse if you take out Bergeron, Steen, and Saldiveri, who were all selected to play guard for their new teams. Maybe some teams did see them at tackle, but it’s telling if they were more valued as guards than tackles given the massive shortage of tackles in this class.

I posted about how Dawand Jones refused to weigh in at his pro day, with Rick Spielman (former Vikings GM, now writing for The 33rd Team) theorizing that he could be pushing 400 pounds and didn’t want to admit it. But he wasn’t alone in that combine to pro day stretch being rough.

Jaelyn Duncan gained 16 pounds from the combine (24 days), ran .21 slower in the 40 and lost an inch on his vert and 4 inches on his broad. Braeden Daniels gained 13 pounds in 19 days. Wanya Morris gained 10 pounds in 36 days recovering from a hamstring injury.

Overall, just yikes.

 

[Jim Beankie]

In an interview with Matt Landers, I heard him say he had worked with EXOS predraft, and that got me down a rabbit hole with how that all worked. Well before that, though, I remembered watching former 800m Olympian Nick Symmonds trying the Combine tests with former LB Lorenzo Alexander, and he got a little bit of coaching from exos to get his times down - didn't realize it was exos until today (didn't register), and I watched it predraft last year. I mean I don't know how much of it is staged, but it was interesting.

Dang - EXOS costs $15k-$25k per player. For a lot of these fringe late round players, that's gonna be out of reach. Exos supposedly trains half of the top 100 picks in any given year. What they do is thorough (and no I'm not in any way affiliated - it's just sad that what patfanken mentioned really is true - it's like for kids who get outside school tutors to try to get into Ivies).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/02/28/scouting-combine-training-exos/

 

[Zuma]

It’s my opinion some of the older coaches in the NFL don’t see the value of the younger generation of players in the draft. This is primarily about size and speed. Some of the older coaches are not changing quickly enough to see that lighter players at most positions is going to happen whether they acknowledge / like it or not. We are way past the time for experimenting with lighter LB’s…it should actually be the norm but some teams won’t go there.

So should BB zig with a run heavy, smash mouth football style on offense and get fatties on the D-line while other teams zag with lighter players? No. IMO the direction of the game has changed too much to go that route. Light and fast will be the way to go for a long time.

 

[rochrist]

It’s my opinion some of the older coaches in the NFL don’t see the value of the younger generation of players in the draft. This is primarily about size and speed. Some of the older coaches are not changing quickly enough to see that lighter players at most positions is going to happen whether they acknowledge / like it or not. We are way past the time for experimenting with lighter LB’s…it should actually be the norm but some teams won’t go there.

So should BB zig with a run heavy, smash mouth football style on offense and get fatties on the D-line while other teams zag with lighter players? No. IMO the direction of the game has changed too much to go that route. Light and fast will be the way to go for a long time.

Apparently, we've already forgotten the old-fashioned Pats kicking the **** out of the new-fangled modern NFL Rams in the SB.